500 (Classic) Noah's "Ark"ive

[Noah500]

Some more recycling of old seat material, this time into a 60s-ish-style flight bag.

Take:

• Pieces of vinyl from the front and back of the old seat covers
• Piping from old seat covers
• Old static seat belt that I previously replaced with inertia reels
• Some fabric that I had from somewhere else to make backing for the fluted part (as the foam scrim had rotted away)
• A zip
• Some thread
• A bit of foam to make the interior base

I measured up and marked the material, pinned it together and sewed it on an old Singer manual sewing machine. That sounds simple but in fact there was quite a lot of swearing, unpicking and restitching before I got it to an acceptable standard. Not sure if I will use it as a general bag, but I think it goes well with the era of the car... and it's made using some old parts of the actual car, so bonus

 

[Noah500]

Last bit of upcycling from the seat covers - not enough piping left and the fluting on the top and sides doesn't quite line up due to stretching (because the foam and fabric backing on the driver's side had given up the ghost). Anyway, it's good enough for a useful tool bag to go in the boot/trunk

 

[Noah500]

Per this thread, my latest mini project has been to fit rear inertia reel 3-point seatbelts.

 

[Noah500]

A bit of minor fettling today:

1. Not sure if the cable has stretched over time but it's become increasingly difficult to open the front boot with the handle - however much you pull, it doesn't easily release the catch. I wedged open the safety catch (the one you have to release manually to actually open the lid) just to check it wasn't that, and it's definitely the main catch. The solution was to put a couple of aluminium spacers on the cable before the stop inside the bonnet, so the catch is effectively not 100% clicked into the hole on the underneath of the leading edge of the boot lid. Seems to have done the trick, though it's still not easy to open...

2. I was browsing through this forum and saw something about adjusting the clutch cable. My clutch pedal had a bit of slack at the top, so I looked down through from the top of the engine bay and could see the adjustment rod, which had the locking nut about 2cm away from the main nut, and another 2cm, from the end of the rod. I was able to tighten the lock nut by hand from the top but it was too far to get 2 spanners on the nuts to tighten them against each other, so I went underneath. Wheels chocked, rear jacked up and axle stands installed, which made it a much easier prospect (once I had removed the undertray on the LH side of the engine bay). I took the opportunity to tighten up the main nut first to reduce the slack, then got spanners on the 2 nuts to lock them against each other. Hopefully that will help, though it'll take a run out to really check.

 

[Noah500]

A couple of photos of the work I did yesterday:

I tested the boot catch release again and it was still sticking a bit, so I bent down the lip of the hole where the catch goes in to make it a smoother run,. Seems to work fine now(note: I had already previously put a piece of angle ali to brace the cable bracket, as it was a bit bendy)

Clutch adjuster all nipped up... to be tested

 

[Noah500]

I finally got round to fixing the front boot catch which was making it difficult to open. I suspect that the cable had stretched/slipped, causing part of the problem, but the catch itself was also worn. I got a new catch from Ricambi Fiat 500 Spares on ebay not a fantastic piece of casting so I filed down the seams from the mould to make it smoother.

Thanks to some guidance in this thread I cut down a longer bolt to size and extended the threaded part so the shank was just long enough to go through the catch and the housing with a couple of washers. I ended up just using washers under the head of the bolt and the nyloc nut - didn't need the other one which I had thought might be needed to prevent the catch from rattling.

I undid the cable, bent it further down and refitted it, and the end result is 10x better than it was. Looking at the photo, I may take the spring off and feed the end through the hole in the mounting plate first, rather than hooking it round the edge.

 

[Noah500]

The other day I was driving back from a small meeting and suddenly I found the accelerator pedal wasn't returning when taking my foot off. It turned out the return spring had broken. Looking at the carburettor end of the cable, I also found that the hole in the lever had worn away - not right through like the mount at that other end did a couple of years ago (see here) but like then, I made a little tab up to provide a more secure mounting for the new spring.

 

[Noah500]

Another minor annoyance fixed today!

Every since I got the car (August 2021) the quarterlight catches have been loose. I'm not sure if they've got worse but it got to the point where water would be coming in when I washed the car. I managed to unscrew one of the grubscrews (normal flat head screwdriver) but the top of the other one was wrecked, so I ended up carefully drilling it out and retapping it (M4).

The end f the grub screw is what's known as a dog point, i.e. there is a shoulder to a smaller diameter unthreaded length of about 2mm. This fits in a groove on the spindle of the catch - sorry, I didn't take a photo of that. The one old one that I got out intact showed a lot of wear to the dog point end, which seems to be the cause of the loose catches. I got stainless M4 replacements with hex socket heads - they are 8mm long which was too long so I had to cut a bit off; probably 6mm would have been right.

Once I fitted the new grub screws - a bit of a tight squeeze to get a hex driver in there - the catches now do actually catch nice and firmly.

 

[Goldnrust]

Tidy work All these small fixes add up to a big difference in how a car feels.

 

[Noah500]

The odometer rolled over to 50,000Km today... I make that an average of 950KM per year!!!

 

[Noah500]

I finally got round to fixing the front boot catch which was making it difficult to open. I suspect that the cable had stretched/slipped, causing part of the problem, but the catch itself was also worn. I got a new catch from Ricambi Fiat 500 Spares on ebay not a fantastic piece of casting so I filed down the seams from the mould to make it smoother.

Thanks to some guidance in this thread I cut down a longer bolt to size and extended the threaded part so the shank was just long enough to go through the catch and the housing with a couple of washers. I ended up just using washers under the head of the bolt and the nyloc nut - didn't need the other one which I had thought might be needed to prevent the catch from rattling.

I undid the cable, bent it further down and refitted it, and the end result is 10x better than it was. Looking at the photo, I may take the spring off and feed the end through the hole in the mounting plate first, rather than hooking it round the edge.

I went to the Departure Lounge Café Italian car breakfast meeting today and noticed that the front boot lid was open! Luckily it was held in place by the safety catch but the main catch was not holding. I temporarily fixed it for the return journey with a bungee cord, then did a repair to build out the edge of the hole (which I had previously filed down a bit because of a loose cable . A bent piece of metal, drilled through and riveted in place and it now clocks shut and stays shut!

 

[Noah500]

I've just finished my mini-project to recreate a split engine lid as seen in a few Instagram posts, aiming for minimal visual difference from the original when the split lid is closed. Full details here but the summary is:

• Take two old full engine lids and cut them so the bottom edge of the top part of one overlaps the top edge of the bottom part of the other
• Hinge the top one at the top, fit gas struts to hold it up
• Tidy up, paint, etc.

I've still kept the old lid in case I want to change back to the original but here are the before and after pics

 

[StMarks]

I've just read through your thread, a cracking read* imho Noah500. Thank you.



* read- "inspirational" lol.

 

[Noah500]

A couple of slight tweaks:

• spring fitted to the centre of the bottom lid to hold it in place - it hooks onto the engine lifting ring
• side tabs of the bottom lid cut off and bolts removed to make it easier to open and close, and to leave space for...
• the gas struts to be moved lower and get the open top lid more like horizontal when open instead of tilting up

 

[124BC1]

The other day I was driving back from a small meeting and suddenly I found the accelerator pedal wasn't returning when taking my foot off. It turned out the return spring had broken. Looking at the carburettor end of the cable, I also found that the hole in the lever had worn away - not right through like the mount at that other end did a couple of years ago (see here) but like then, I made a little tab up to provide a more secure mounting for the new spring.View attachment 447838
View attachment 447839

Iirc, that type of excessive wear at the spring attachment point can be caused by the spring vibrating - on some cars, the spring can even be seen (or felt with your fingertips if lightly touched) to vibrate or shake at certain engine revs.

Fiat fitted rubber dampers inside the spring on some models to overcome this problem (iirc, I first saw these dampers inside carb. throttle return springs on the Fiat 131 circa 1978?). It was just a short length of round rubber moulding, whose size was tight enough not to fall out but loose enough not to interfere with spring extension and retraction.

On other makes of car, I've seen a short length of rubber sleeving fitted over some of the spring coils - this looked like a short length of electrical 'heatshrink' tubing without being heat-shrunk.
Some (Japanese?) carburettors have little plastic/nylon bushes fitted in the holes where springs are attached.

 

[Noah500]

A couple more changes:

• Transferred the chrome number plate light from the original full lid
• Stuck on the centre part of a front panel badge instead of the Union Jack

 

[Noah500]

A couple more changes:

• Transferred the chrome number plate light from the original full lid
• Stuck on the centre part of a front panel badge instead of the Union Jack

 

[Noah500]

I just went out with a small video camera (SJCAM) attached to the inside of the back window in order to check out the extent of 'upper lid wobble' at higher speeds. I went for a quick run along the M3 between Junctions 7 and 6 - about 6 miles, getting up to a bit over 70mph on a downhill stretch - and, although there is a very slight wobble, it is not major and doesn't change with speed so I think the lid and the gas struts are solid enough as is... I may see if I can put a strip of metal to stiffen up the centre of the lower edge but it's not urgent.

 

[Noah500]

For the first time in 50 years (1975, when my car moved from Viterbo to Rome and was re-registered) my car has some number plates with the original Italian registration Obviously for show use only, but I feel it adds something to the 500 ownership experience. I have seen a number of suppliers who will make up original-style Italian plates in pressed plastic but they are all north of £100 which I couldn't justify. These are vinyl stickers and cost just £20. I stuck them onto spare plastic number plate bases that I had on my car at one time - not great for proper UK plates and now replaced with pressed metal ones but ideal for these show plates once cut to size. To fix them temporarily over my UK plates, I put some strong magnets and a metal L section so the Italian plate rests on the metal frame, and some elastic on the front to slip over the UK plate.